@wegster

Quote:

Heh, your comment of 'super easy development tools' is referring to what, exactly?

You compared PS3 with XBox 360 dev tools, so I guess you want to point out they are easier to work with like for instance XNA tools., Blitz Basic, AMOS, etc also are easier to get quick results with.

Many PS3 developers are happy with the PS3 dev kits as has been available to them since a couple of months, they are eager to learn, experiment and feel competent enough to work with these dev kits to produce amazing hardware pushing software. Sure they will need a little time to show the fruits of their labour. Many ambitious games take years to develop and won't be rushed just to prove a forum poster wrong.

Quote:

I AM kinda looking forward to Assassins Creed, though, whenever that's slated for release.

Spring.

Last edited by MikeB on 22-Jan-2007 at 01:00 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

You compared PS3 with XBox 360 dev tools, so I guess you want to point out they are easier to work with like for instance XNA tools., Blitz Basic, AMOS, etc also are easier to get quick results with.

Since you insist on making silly comparisons remember that plenty of impressive Amiga games were done using Blitz Basic.

However having good tools is not the same as something being easy like BASIC. It merely means that you have to spend less time on building a hammer every time you want to hit a nail.

@Jorge

While we are at it:

Quote:

[root@localhost ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported clock : 3192.000000MHz revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501) processor : 1 cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported clock : 3192.000000MHz revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501) timebase : 79800000 machine : PS3PF [root@localhost ~]#

X runs now. Written from Firefox from the PS3.

_________________
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@Jorge
Quote:

I doubt that. Simply because the SPE cannot initiate any mem transfer without the PPU setting up the DMA controller.

SPE can do it's own DMA, it's not dependant on the PPE.

Quote:

Can someone confirm, that the OS is running on the SPE ?

That said from what I've read the OS reserves 1 SPE and can get another when it wants - however this arrangement has never been confirmed (or denied).

More and more will use the SPEs over time. According to one Dev he reckons the 3rd gen games will be almost entirely SPE based and barely use the PPE at all.

@ wegster

Quote:

Actually, it wasn't, AFAIK. IBM is/was pushing Cell effectively as 'distributed computing' for the most part, where you can form Cell 'networks' of devices, from PDAs to consoles or full computers, as well as other devices.

That's a software distribution method, only Sony have ever talked about it (mainly in the patent).

Quote:

it _was_ certainly designed with an eye towards media handling, as many consumer devices can benefit from this...

I never said it wasn't, I said the primary focus of this chip was games. Other versions of the chip will have different primary focuses (e.g. scientific, embedded).

This is different from if it's only focus had been only games which it wasn't.

I'm curious, what differences (if any) do you think there would be if it was for *games only*.

_________________
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@minator

Quote:

More and more will use the SPEs over time. According to one Dev he reckons the 3rd gen games will be almost entirely SPE based and barely use the PPE at all.

That makes sense to some extend and leaves the PPU where it was supposed to be: As a control cpu. Even a general purpose OS could work that way. Leaving system resources being managed by the control cpu and use distributed per app code.

_________________
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@Trezzer

Quote:

Since you insist on making silly comparisons remember that plenty of impressive Amiga games were done using Blitz Basic.

Worms: Director's Cut being the most impressive. Sure great games can be made using Blitz Basic and are of use and importance, but for instance demo coders won't use Blitz. Demo coders want to push the hardware to the maximum fully using their own creativity. Little available memory and low clockrates are actually often seen as a challenge rather than a limitation. Not everyone shares the same mentality though.

But the PS3 dev tools are actually easier to develop with than for the PS2 according to developers. To use your example you have the tools, materials, etc, everything required to built your furniture for the home, but it's less a Ikea-like 'assemble yourself at home' kind of process. Traditional game engines will need to be largely re-designed to get the most out of the cell processor and I would like to see those SPE's be put to some good use.

@ others

So what if the Cell is multi-purpose, the Amiga custom chips were amazing at games, but this didn't mean the thousands of colors, blitter/copper effects, stereo sound, etc, weren't also of use in applications such as Scala and for many others. For some time the Amiga was actually extremely powerful for games as well as business/home user software.

XBox users often claimed the XBox was extremely powerful for gaming with it's 733 MHz Intel Pentium III, which were also used by ordinary Windows PCs, the 68000 was used in the Amiga, Apple Mac, Sega Megadrive, etc...

Last edited by MikeB on 22-Jan-2007 at 03:13 AM.

@MikeB
Quote:

Worms: Director's Cut being the most impressive. Sure great games can be made using Blitz Basic and are of use and importance, but for instance demo coders won't use Blitz. Demo coders want to push the hardware to the maximum fully using their own creativity.

But "demo scene" titles doesn't quite bring in $$$. To date, $$$ follows titles with interactive elements.

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@minator

Quote:

That said from what I've read the OS reserves 1 SPE and can get another when it wants - however this arrangement has never been confirmed (or denied).

According to some sources, the OS reserves 1 SPE for security e.g. TPM and DRM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

Final PS3 dev kits weren't available until the second half of August 2006. Developers would have themselves become familiar with the dev kits, from October 2006: President of Enterbrain, Hirokazu Hamamura, says "We are unlikely to see games exhibiting a level only PS3 can achieve until the end of 2007." So if you followed all the news closely this shouldn't have come too much of a surprise.

Acknowledged, if that is the case it explains many titles (while also disappointing with PS3's performance "accessibility"). However, I am sure people like Sony and people closest to them did have PS3 development hardware long before that. I would have expected at least one super-strong launch title from those guys given that they had all this extra time instead of launching March 2006.

Certainly the Xbox 360 did not have any really impressive launch games (unlike Xbox which had Halo) and Microsoft did rush the machine out for Christmas 2005, lets be clear about that. I just expected that with all the hype and the extra time taken by Sony would have resulted in a more polished system as well as more polished games than Xbox 360 at launch. I would have expected the same from Microsoft if they had announced a delay of six months few weeks before launch because of manufacturing capacity issues.

I guess Sony were in reality no where near launching in March 2006 and the blu-ray shortage was only one of the reasons, that would explain a lot. I also feel that PS3 performance did not live up to the hype and while there is certainly a lot of future potential in the system, the fact that the potential is harder to get out suggests that PS3 and Xbox 360 are more on-par than the pre-launch marketing frenzy would have led us to believe. If the PS3 was inherently superior in every way and really lived up to the hype, there is no reason its launch titles wouldn't at least have been somewhat better (or, say, all 1080p) than Xbox 360's even if PS3 true potential was still left untouched.

Potential is good, but harder to substantiate and, most importantly, harder to play games on... today.

It is interesting to see how the competition evolves performance-wise. Certainly the SPEs can be used for a lot of interesting things, no doubt. I think Cell in general is very interesting and it is interesting to see whether or not computing will evolve in this direction or in the direction of more general-purpose cores. I'm just surprised people often seem to forget Xbox 360 also has a lot of concurrent hardware functionality that could be used for exactly the same kinds of things. I'm looking forward to some developer comments on comparing how they have implemented multi-core/threading stuff on both systems in the future.

Last edited by jtsiren on 22-Jan-2007 at 07:53 AM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 22-Jan-2007 at 07:47 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Quote: Heh, your comment of 'super easy development tools' is referring to what, exactly? You compared PS3 with XBox 360 dev tools, so I guess you want to point out they are easier to work with like for instance XNA tools., Blitz Basic, AMOS, etc also are easier to get quick results with.

For a guy who prides himself in staying positive, you sure do throw your share of cheap-shots. From the past blue-collar reference (which, by no means, can be read as a positive in this context) to comparing Xbox 360's development tools with basics... (And please don't respond by saying "but AMOS and BB were great!", which they certainly were for some things, we both know they aren't associated with the highest level of serious development tools while Xbox 360's dev-kit most definitely is. Like the company or not, Microsoft has great development tools in general.)

Why not just admit that at the time, according to developer comment, Xbox 360 has the superior development tools and not try to make it sound like that's a bad thing? Sony may well come out with better and better tools in time, but at the moment, why try to make it sound like this is a plus for the console while the XO people dabble with basic? That's just silly.

There is a reason some people think you sound like Sony's PR department. You continue to choose your wordings and points of response in a way that tries to put PS3 in the best light possible (even when occasionally criticizing it with silk-gloves or pointing the blame to the real PR department). I don't know, maybe you just don't realize it yourself, but that's the way I see it and I guess I'm not the only one. If anything, your way of rooting for PS3 is making a disservice for it in my books - and I'm the guy who wants PS3 to be better than XO so I have a reason to get one.

If I may make a suggestion, drop the "positivity" if you can't separate it from the false positivity. I would have made the same suggestion back when you compared OS4 and MOS often, if I really could have put my finger on it earlier. It sounded false then and it sounds false now. Let's get back to discussing what's really going on and let the systems win on their own credits, not by seeing every angle with rose-tinted glasses while throwing "positive" nags at the opposition.

This thread and the other one started by wegster have good examples of people liking the PS3 and providing solid arguments for it, without sounding like you do. They tell it the way they see it (plusses and minuses), without the "enthusiast" agenda.

***

As for a point I discussed earlier, a local PS3 user tested force-feedback wheels on Gran Tourismo HD and said they worked (although reverse didn't for some reason). He liked the game very much in 1080p. I think his was solid reporting that certainly eased one worry for PS3. I don't know about rumble though, but FF worked.

Last edited by jtsiren on 22-Jan-2007 at 07:46 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

The Cell is very useful for lots of things, there are 7 SPEs for usage by game developers on the PS3, some examples from someone working for Vivendi's High Moon Studios regarding graphics: "PSINext: Mike I wanted to end on this particular question, because I think it’s no secret the level of speculation there has been on message boards around the Web as to the potential for Cell to assist with the graphical output of the Playstation 3. The ray-cast clouds in 'Warhawk' seem to represent at least one example of Cell-assisted exotic rendering… and geometry and image post-processing effects seem to be what jump to mind most readily for ways in which Cell might normally assist. In what other ways do you think Cell might be utilized on the graphics side? Mike Acton: Well, each developer is going to have their own tricks and ideas, and it's hard to speculate on what sort of amazing things we'll see over the lifetime of the Playstation 3. There are a few that seem like obvious choices: o Compression; both image and geometry data. For the amount of content I expect to see over the course of this generation of games, real time decompression of just about everything that is pumped to the GPU will be a must-have. With the right techniques, at times working with compressed data will actually be faster than uncompressed data on the SPUs! o Improved 2D graphics. Not just user interface elements, which in my opinion don't get nearly enough attention in games, but in any 2D image used in the game. I expect to see animated image, normal and depth maps - not the wasteful and uninspired flip-book style we see occasionally now, but fully skeletal, curved animations. It could, for example, be a tattoo with dozens of different animations depending on the mood of the character, or maybe leeches that attack and crawl under the skin of the character. And fonts. Real fonts. I want to see beautifully rendered, perfectly set fonts at any scale. o More complex character skeletons. Transforming a character's skeleton animation data on the GPU generally means limiting the number of influences each vertex can have. I'd like to see some complex characters with a thousand bones or more, where the skeleton can be re-arranged depending on the circumstance, and some amazing animation (for which you'd need the above compression) to go along with it. For instance, fantasy games have a lot of opportunity to explore character complexity on the Cell. While it's not impossible to achieve that character complexity using the GPU, it is a task well suited for the SPUs. o Lighting - I hope that we'll finally see the death of baked-in lighting. I don't mean to say that lighting influences, light and shadow maps, and combined lights won't be cached. But there will always will be some freedom for those values to be changed by the artists at runtime, even if they can't change every frame. o Particle systems and effects. And I don't mean a shower of points or sparks! Effects are especially well suited to offloading to the SPUs, so I expect this is the first place we'll see the complexity of animation, physics and graphics really come together. o Vertex animation. There's almost certainly going to be a mountain of water effects, plasma-type effects, velocity field effects, etc. that will make their way into the games simply because these are excellent entry points into Cell programming. o Terrain generation. IBM has already put together a ray-cast terrain generator, but I expect to see something a little more GPU friendly. With broadband built into the Playstation 3, who knows? We might even see an earth based game that generates its backgrounds on the fly using Google Earth! And of course continued work on procedural images and geometry, and maybe offloading some Cg onto the SPUs. At the end of the day, I don't know all the ways developers are going to take advantage of the Cell for graphics over the lifetime of the Playstation 3."

For RSX's older G7x achitecture, SPUs allocation would be suitable. The bottleneck would be between RSX and SPUs.

PS3's needs is not same as XBOX 360 since Xenos GPU uses the unfied shader model (which is scheduled/dispatched with 64 hardware thread engine).
We shouldn’t generalize the “GPU” limitation based on G7x architecture for AMD R5x0 (CTM), AMD C1/Xenos, AMD R6x0 (CTM), and NVIDIA G80** (CUDA).

According to http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36798
AMD has evaluated NVIDIA's G80 more as a CPU than a "GPU".

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@jtsiren

Quote:

you compared OS4 and MOS often

Yes, with you and AmiGR there have been quarrels regarding such topics, that's why I prefer to not discuss them with you. From my perspective you and others were unable to discuss platform preferences, especially if the opinions and point of view stated weren't in-line with your own. Sorry, but I can't help you there.

Simply put IMO overall AmigaOS4 is better and more pleasing to work with than any of the other Amiga community solutions, try to live with this. If you want to believe MorphOS o maybe AROS is currently the nicer OS, that's fine with me as well.

BTW, I've never stated that many aspects of Microsoft's development environments aren't powerful, however one thing I dislike the most is that many supported features are largely tied to Microsoft's systems, Direct X, C#, Visual Basic, XNA, all more or less incompatible with independent internationally used industry wide standards. More common toolsets, standards and programming languages would IMO have benefitted everyone working within the computer industry (more jobs, more progress, more competition, etc). IMO some dev options have the danger of making potentially talented developers become lazy or competence-wise too tied to one platform / toolset and maybe in some cases unable to truly comprehend how a computer really functions underneath the hood. IMO, if not grown up with dev environment like XNA or Easy AMOS, the more talented developers will be able to master the Cell.

Last edited by MikeB on 22-Jan-2007 at 09:52 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 22-Jan-2007 at 09:48 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Simply put IMO overall AmigaOS4 is better and more pleasing to work with than any of the other Amiga community solutions, try to live with this. If you want to believe MorphOS o maybe AROS is currently the nicer OS, that's fine with me as well.

You forget, perhaps, that I brought this exact same thing up earlier in this thread. Except I was/am on AmigaOS's 4's "side" and still think/thought you were/are doing it a disservice by doing things as one-sided as you do/did - especially while at OSNews.

Repeating the same silly non-points (I'm not saying all were, but you did the exact same thing back then as you do now) made people laugh at the Amiga, when they should have been interested. Taking tiny news bits about things other platforms did years ago did not make AmigaOS look better for outsiders even though we could appreciate that it was an advance for *us*.

On one side I sit here feeling sort of guilty for attacking you because of your enthusiasm for a product that we both appreciate, but on the other hand I firmly believe you do more damage than good.

Quote:

I've never stated that many aspects of Microsoft's development environments aren't powerful

You've hinted that they aren't flexible - like your example with IKEA. This is, of course, absolute and utter non-sense. The way you present it the PS3 has the perfect development tools, whereas the 360 has tools that, sure, are great, but on the other hand they don't let you tap into the machine as well - and there's not as much power to begin with.

As far as the development tools, this is absolutely and completely false. I don't really feel we need to rehash what everyone's been saying all along about CELL/RSX vs Xenon/Xenos agree with it or not. The simple matter of fact according to developers is, that while the PS3 development tools are an improvement over the PS2 tools, they seem to be quite far from the development tools available for the 360.

* It does make a tangible difference in real life.
* It does make sense to provide as many tools as possible to developers.
* It doesn't detract flexibility when you provide developers with as many tools as possible to supplement their own in-house tools.
* Having powerful development tools do not equate to using a BASIC/AMOS-like language, where you can't use the machine to it's absolute fullest.

If you would stop trying to twist things to a point where you - as the only one - think you're still making a a valid point, maybe the discussion would become less polarized.

Quote:

one thing I dislike the most is that many supported features are largely tied to Microsoft's systems, Direct X, C#, Visual Basic, XNA, all more or less incompatible with independent internationally used industry wide standards.

It's not tied to Visual Basic in any way. XNA is a set of tools.

While I'm as much for open standards as you, I guess it's kind of pointless to compare about "industry wide standards", when the "industry wide standard" is pretty much "microsoft platforms". That's a reason for disliking it in the first place, but trying to portray it, by bringing the "industry wide" in there, as some rarely used set of APIs, tools, languages etc. is just plain silly and you know it.

Quote:

IMO, if not grown up with dev environment like XNA or Easy AMOS, the more talented developers will be able to master the Cell.

See, you did it again. Spewed nonsense and tried to put a little spin on it - even if it is with an IMO in front. If someone said something as insanely incoherent to my face like that I'd be tempted to slap their face. If they weren't delirious at least they deserved it.

Quote:

IMO some dev options have the danger of making potentially talented developers become lazy or competence-wise too tied to one platform / toolset

Programmers, modelers etc. go where they are needed. They learn the languages/tools they need to learn to make a living. Sometimes that changes over the course of their career and they adapt.

@MikeB

Quote:

Worms: Director's Cut being the most impressive.

While Worms:DC was a fine game, I'd have to put Skidmarks above it. IIRC Roadkill was also developed using Blitz.

One quite advanced Blitz game that never saw the light of day (not for programming language reasons) was Dafel: Bloodline.

@Trezzer

Quote:

On one side I sit here feeling sort of guilty for attacking you because of your enthusiasm for a product that we both appreciate, but on the other hand I firmly believe you do more damage than good.

I will respond to you, Mike, later at length but just wanted to quickly say that Trezzer hit a nail on the head here as far as my opinion goes. Judging from other comments, such as Yo on the other thread, we may not be the only people who feel this way.

This makes debating with Mike a tiresome exercise, even when the topic doesn't really divide us that much like it doesn't in this case (unlike during the AmigaOS/Inc. debates when it often did).

I certainly don't have anything against PS3. Give me a few more months of discussing PS3 with Mike and I might have something against it...

Last edited by jtsiren on 22-Jan-2007 at 10:53 AM.

@MikeB

See what Kojima has to say about PS3 development.

@thread writers.

I would just say what this guy is saying about the "cel" assisting with Rendering is nothing new. I have had an HLSL shader that does ray casting (for things like clouds) since the release of Direct X9 with Direct 3D in 2003.. The reasons that people are saying that this can do just an outstanding job above these others really have never written shaders or done any HLSL type development.

The stuff mentioned that makes the PS3 SOO good is things that aren't really inventive and have been around since at least 2003. This GPU development was new back then, but it takes a few years for people to start learning how to use and take advantage of this stuff.

I guess the wow factor just isn't there for me, I am glad to see people using this stuff finally but believe me there is *NOTHING* above average in any of this technology that folks have mentioned to you. It's 2007 you should expect it.. I know the Amiga community is sometimes like living on a desert island but if we are gonna tout platform superiority, folks will need to find a better reason to say something is superior.

I'd challenge anyone to race my Dual Core AMD 64 x2, with dual SLI based GeForce 6800s still today. None of the games I have even on the PC really take serious advantage of even this configuration after having it for nearly a year.

@Trezzer, @jtsiren

I stopped arguing back and it's worked for me. And I'm sure Mike's happy about that too.

You've tried to explain what XNA actually is, and he's brought up Easy AMOS. Not even Blitz, not even real AMOS, but the beginner/kid's version! That's a complete wind-up. If you keep arguing it'll be Shoot-em-up Construction kit followed by a change of subject. Followed by the same points about AMOS being brought up down the line. I wouldn't waste your breath.

Chris

@Trezzer

Quote:

Repeating the same silly non-points (I'm not saying all were, but you did the exact same thing back then as you do now) made people laugh at the Amiga, when they should have been interested.

In the good old days people were very positive and open-minded over at OSNew.com with regard to AmigaOS4s progress and the articles/news I posted. Later I did counter a lot of attacks from BBRV/MorphOS/AROS fans in reply to my articles. I won't get into this anymore, let's keep the past behind us, but IMO without counter arguments at the time it would all have been too one-sided.

Sorry, but I am currently not in the position to defend myself against personal attacks. My girlfriend is very ill, the doctor came over and an ambulance was required to take us to the hospital. I am now in much distress as she is going through an operation right now and all I can do is wait.

Yo asked me if she could lock this thread yesterday and start a new one to which I accepted, please do so now and keep me out of the following discussion. I don't feel too well, this and the waiting stresses me out.

@MikeB

This thread locked upon Originator's request.

I hope everything goes well. I send my best thoughts and wishes to you both.

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